Miscellaneous: No balance, no fair

Another week, another column and space to put my space. I ended last week’s column with talk of “fair and balanced.”

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Ridgecrest Daily Independent - Ridgecrest, CA

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Posted Aug. 17, 2013 at 12:14 PM

Posted Aug. 17, 2013 at 12:14 PM

Another week, another column and space to put my space. I ended last week’s column with talk of “fair and balanced.” The assumption being I would write about FOX News and its ridiculous motto.

I thought for sure that Rupert Murdoch would have erased that foolish moniker years ago, but I guess people are still drinking the punch.

The idea of news somehow being fair and balanced is absurd to begin with, but for such a biased mouthpiece for the Republican party as FOX to make the claim is comical.

First, balance has no part in journalism. There are situations where a back-and-forth between two parties, a “he said, she said” conversation, is reported. But there are few stories that ask a perpetrator his motive and joy and his side of the story of a rape, to balance out the terror and horror story of the victim. And, as anyone who has sat through a talking head show like Bill O’Reilly knows, balance is crappy for ratings. People like to see one person get yelled at for their ideological beliefs. And yes, people like it or it wouldn’t be on the air.

Being fair in journalism is a bit trickier. It seems unfair to highlight one person who makes widgets and not to showcase all widget makers. Being fair in journalism means waiting for the official police report about a crime and not taking gossip that someone has posted on Facebook and running with it. And it may not seem fair to post the name of a neighbor who was arrested and appears in the daily police log and then published in the paper. But it is the police who are posting the logs and we just report on it.

I guess what I’m getting at is that there’s not enough time in the day to be fair – to follow up on every lead, or to question the arrest of everyone on the police log or to cover every widget maker.

But life’s not fair, haven’t you heard?

While I have admittedly not had to endure much of FOX News, I have never found it to be balanced or fair. I have heard O’Reilly tell people to shut up on his show, which is fine, but it hardly lives up to being fair and balanced.

The only people I personally knew who watched FOX News were old men whom, “the hideous rot of life made him easier to harvest.” (Thanks, Herman Melville.)

FOX as a global entertainment leader is quite balanced in its TV programming. The same network that has brought us Family Guy, funny but also vomit-eating-grotesque, is the same network that has introduced the phrase “neo-Nazi feminist” and “conservative bikers” into the lexicon, along with letting an idiot like Glenn Beck say things like liberals are trying to separate the country from God and the Constitution. I hope it works, because I thought the separation already existed.

Page 2 of 2 - FOX is as bad as a televangelist claiming the bigger a donation to his church, the bigger place in heaven he’ll receive. I wouldn’t worry so much about these fools, but I forget that many people actually watch and believe what FOX News has to say.

I’ve been told by more than one stranger, “If you want to get the whole story, watch FOX.” And these are people I thought were rational thinking individuals. Maybe they are, but they are not proving it.

“It is better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you’re a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt,” said Mark Twain.